Then he looked back to Scott. “Malachi sent us to keep an eye on you, to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed.”
Scott didn’t believe that.
“What did you tell them?” the agent asked.
“I told them I buried it out in the woods, but they would’ve followed us back to the commune. They put a microchip or something in her.”
“We can take care of that when we get back.”
“You think we could do it here?”
“If you are worried about the commune being discovered, I am afraid there is nothing that can be done about that now.”
Scott thought of Ralston, of the children throwing the baseball. “They’ll be slaughtered,” he said.
“Malachi explained their situation to them. He encouraged them to leave in advance.”
“To go where?”
“There is another community in New York, about a hundred miles northeast.”
“And how are they supposed to get there?”
“Come on, Matthew.” The three Mossad agents turned and began heading back northwest through the woods, leaving Scott to fall in line. Scott grabbed Jennifer’s hand and led her after them. “How are they supposed to get there?” he asked again.
It wasn’t fair, and he needed desperately to do something about it. But what? What was his main priority now? His wife, the fate of the ring, or the community? Just a few hours before, the answer would’ve been absurdly obvious, but now, after looking into Jennifer’s eyes… somehow he needed to find a way to accomplish all three.
****
Two hours later, Scott led his wife into the commune and toward the Israeli command post. He helped her up the steps and into the large tent.
“So, you survived?”
Scott spun to see Malachi standing there wearing a small smile.
“Yeah.” He didn’t return the expression. “Thanks for the backup.”
“What are friends for?” Then he turned his attention to Jennifer. “I hear you have a little problem.”
She instinctively grabbed her neck.
“I think it’s a microchip,” Scott said. “A transmitter.”
“We’ll get it right out,” he responded. He motioned for some of his men to come over. “Lay down on your stomach, please,” he told Jennifer.
She handed Scott his jacket back and lay down on the table, shaking from a bitter chill that seemed to be in her very bones.
Scott watched as they extracted the tiny chip from beneath the skin on her neck, and he knew that he needed to get her someplace warm fast. If she got sick, with her body already exhausted and vulnerable, there would be no hospital available to her.
One of Malachi’s men put a bandage on her neck, while another dropped the chip onto the ground and crushed it with his heel.
Malachi looked at his watch, then to Scott. “We can’t all fit on the Blackhawk so we will make two trips. You and your wife will be on the second trip. In the mean time, you might as well get a fire going.”
Another agent handed Jennifer a blanket, and Scott nodded his thanks as she wrapped herself in it.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” he said to her. Even if it wasn’t, she was too weak to protest. He kissed her on the forehead, put his jacket on, and went after Malachi. Catching up to him, he placed a hand on his elbow.
Malachi turned. “What is it?”
“Did you talk to Melissa?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And she told us everything that she could.”
Scott leaned a little closer. “And what was that?”
“You suddenly care?”
“Maybe. What did she say?”
“She told us what she learned from studying the ring. Did you read all of the books?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know about the rings, about the Copper Scrolls, and what many have theorized they point to.”
A burst of wind suddenly made him conscious of how cold he was. He nodded, understanding that Malachi had lied to him in the car, that he obviously had read the books, or at least knew what was in them.
Malachi continued. “Father Baer’s writings tell of a scroll the Templars found, one that explained how the rings worked. That scroll, as far as I know, has never been found. Maybe it was handed down through the generations of secret societies along with the other ring, but I doubt it. If they still have the instructions, then why would they need to study it so extensively? I think they only had bits and pieces of the whole to work with. They finally had both rings in their possession, but they didn’t know what to do with them.”
Scott pondered this, wondered if it were possible. Of course it’s possible. But was it likely? Why would NASA be studying it? If they simply hoped to unlock its secrets, why not use gemologists or archeologists? Why NASA? He figured it was more plausible that NASA’s interest in it had more to do with that whole extraterrestrial hoax they were supposedly conjuring up, the world’s religions an expression of alien intelligence.
Malachi pulled the ring out of his pocket and held it up so that Scott could see it. “This ring, along with the other one, functions as a key that unlocks the secret chamber the Ark now rests in. But, even more importantly, it leads to the location of that chamber. We do not believe that gaining access to the chamber will be very difficult. We expect opening it with the rings to be somewhat self-explanatory. The problem has always been finding it.”
Scott stole a glance at Jennifer and the agents around her packing up to leave.
“Melissa confirmed that the gem is actually a sort of lens, an instrument maybe used for viewing coded texts. The top is polished, but the underside is refracted.”
“You’re saying it’s like a decoder ring?”
“Maybe the first.” He turned back toward the tent. “The Urim and Thummim stones were somehow used to interpret the will of God. This ring that Solomon built out of the Urim seems to also function as some kind of an interpretation device, as well as being a key. Perhaps light would shine through the lens and illuminate a word or letter, or maybe the refracted lens would unscramble a text. Who knows? But we do believe that this ring is the key that the Copper Scroll speaks of.”
“The key that was supposed to be with the duplicate copy.”
“Right.”
“Except that the duplicate copy was found by the Templars along with the other ring.”
He shrugged. “Maybe the key that the 1953 scroll speaks of is the key to the Ark, and the key that was supposed to be with it was the one that was supposed to interpret them both. I guess no one can really know until they try reading it through the lens of the Urim. In any case, all four objects are needed, and until recently, only one was missing.”
“That would explain the strange letters throughout the Scroll, if they actually appeared as something else through Solomon’s ring.”
Malachi nodded. “The Scrolls were fashioned in such a way that only the ring could decode them.”
“That would mean that Benaiah was somehow able to get the ring back into the priesthood’s possession.”
“In order for the rings to be compatible with the Scrolls, yes, Jeremiah had to have had access to both of them.”
“What about the other ring?”
“Melissa said that her team was given the description of another material, a dark geological object. She was told to find similarities between the two. It would stand to reason that this was a description of the other ring, of the Thummim stone. They wanted her to figure out how the two could function together as a single unit without exposing her to the ring itself.”
Or that’s what they told her while NASA constructed their hoax around both objects, he thought.
“What did she say about the other one?”
“She said that the material they described, the data they sent her, was unlike anything she had ever seen before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. She just said she didn’t understand w
hat it was they gave her and why they assumed the two substances had any relationship to each other.”
“That’s it? Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you think?” Scott asked.
“I think that Father Baer might have been right about it being some kind of judgment on those unworthy of its use. I think it has supernatural ramifications. Perhaps more so than this one.”
“That’s it? That’s all she had?”
“More or less.”
No, they would have already known that. They didn’t need Melissa or NASA to find that out. This knowledge, if it were true, had been passed down to them from the Templars. They wanted the diagnostics of the rings to better work them into their planned deceptions. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take this to my boss.”
“Why not just get rid of it?”
“Because that is not what I was told to do.”
“But that’s what Benjamin was planning on doing, wasn’t it?”
He stopped. “The intentions are the same. The ring will not be attained by those who want to use it for evil.”
“Benjamin thought that any use of it would be evil.”
He nodded. “The Temple will not be built through the use of this ring.”
“Then why not make sure of it?”
He just smiled, slapped him on his good arm. “Take care, Joshua. We’ll send the Blackhawk back to get you. It will take you to New York.”
Scott knew he was lying about the ring, that he was hoping the Ark might restore Israel as God’s center of the world, that with its power they might cast off the globalist yoke, the very thing Benjamin had been trying to prevent. “You leaving now?”
“In ten minutes.”
“Thank you again.”
Malachi nodded and stepped out of the tent, into the rain and toward the helicopter.
Scott let his gaze drift over the commune and didn’t see any sign of preparations being made to leave. He looked back to his wife, then to Malachi. He was standing in the center of a triangle, three different points all shouting for his help. Swearing under his breath, he ran after Malachi. “Wait!”
Malachi stopped.
Feet sloshing through the mud, Scott tried to slow down when he reached Malachi, but his foot slipped and he went barreling into him, almost knocking him down.
“Sorry,” Scott said.
Malachi shot him with an irritated stare.
“I slipped.”
“I have a flight to catch, Matthew, Joshua, whoever you are. What do you want?”
“What about Melissa?”
“She’s sleeping. Ralston said they would care for her.”
“You’re just leaving her?” Scott asked with feigned disbelief.
“She is in no condition to travel.”
“After all she went through, you’re just going to leave her out at the curb with the trash? The only reason you have the ring is because she risked her life to steal it.”
“As you said, she risked her life. Nobody forced her to.”
Scott turned away from him. Was anything fair in this life? “Whatever, Malachi.” He started walking away from him. “Take care of yourself.”
Malachi shouted back to him, “Be ready and stay with my men. The helicopter will be back in a few hours. Don’t miss it.” And he turned and trotted off into the woods, toward the helicopter.
Scott returned to Jennifer’s side. Her lips were a shade of purple and her face resembled that of a ghost.
“Aren’t you cold?” she managed to get out through rattling teeth.
He was okay for the most part, until a gust of wind would come along and stab icicles into his chest. “I’m fine.” He zipped up his hooded sweatshirt that had managed to open and reveal a patch of v-shaped skin. “I’m going to start a fire, okay?”
She didn’t say anything but was able to work her lips into a tight smile.
“Hang in there.” He kissed her frozen lips, and another flood of incomprehensible thoughts and feelings warmed his soul. He walked back out of the tent, noticing the three remaining Mossad agents still packing up some items as the Blackhawk lifted into the sky and disappeared into the sea of dark clouds above them. He was on his way to gather some soggy sticks when a familiar voice sounded from behind.
“You’re back.”
Scott actually smiled before turning around to face Ralston.
“Yeah, I’m back.”
“And you brought a woman with you.”
This time he couldn’t hide the smile. “My wife.”
Ralston mirrored the expression. “Back from the dead.”
“Back from the dead.”
“She looks cold,” he stated. “Come on, Mr. Scott. Let us meet your needs.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Go get your wife and bring her over to my home.”
As he began walking away, Scott called out to him. “Hey, Dan? Sorry about before.”
“No need for an apology. I can be a little forward sometimes. I’m just glad you’re still alive.”
By the time Scott had Jennifer to Ralston’s door, Ralston had a fire going, and his place was nice and cozy. In another room, Scott helped Jennifer out of her wet clothes. She looked slightly embarrassed though, like this wasn’t how she wanted him to see her their first time together — half naked, soaking wet, shivering, and purple. So he just wrapped the blanket around her and took another minute to hold her, to pray for a miraculous escape from the coming soldiers. “Go sit out by the fire,” he whispered. “I’ll be right there.”
Once she walked out of the room, he took the books from his jacket and made sure they weren’t completely soaked. He was surprised to find out just how well they had faired. Some of the edges were wet, and the ink on one of the first pages was bleeding a little, but that seemed to be the extent of it. He picked up Jennifer’s jacket and checked the pockets to see how wet they were. There were two outside pockets on both sides and then one large zipper pocket inside at the left breast. He stuck his hand in it. It was dry. The jacket was heavy, water and wind resistant, and 100% polyester on the outside. The pocket was safe and big enough, so he slid the books into it.
And then he took the ring out of his pocket.
The one he’d taken out of Malachi’s when he pretended to lose his footing and fall into him. He looked at it for a second, pondering just how Malachi had planned to use it without having access to the other ring and scroll. Or maybe he did have access to them. He wondered again if he could be working with the secret societies. But that didn’t make sense. But then again, who knew how many different groups wanted it and for how many different purposes? Father Baer told him not to trust anyone for a reason. Or maybe Malachi hoped that the “lights” ring and the 1953 Copper Scroll together would be enough to reveal the Ark’s location.
It didn’t matter now. He dropped it in the pocket along with the books and zipped it. Then he walked out of the room and joined Jennifer and Daniel.
****
Jennifer had fallen fast asleep, curled up in a fetal position with her head resting in Scott’s lap after drinking a cup of hot tea, and now Scott was moving his fingers through her hair while talking with Ralston.
“You know what’s going to happen when they come, right?” Scott asked him. Their eyes were locked on the fire, its sporadic dancing hypnotizing.
“Whatever God wants to happen.”
“You’re not going to do anything?”
“Like what? We have nowhere to go, and we have nothing to fight with even if we wanted to.”
“You’d stand a better chance if you made a run for it.”
One side of Ralston’s lips turned up into a smile. “No, we’ll face our fate together rather than die alone.” He blinked. “When they came for Jesus, to crucify Him, Peter fought to protect Him. He took out his sword and cut off one of the guard’s ears. And Jesus told him to put away his sword, that all who take the sword
shall perish by the sword. He said, ‘Don’t you think that I can pray to my father, and he can give me more than twelve legions of angels?’ And then when He was talking to Pilate He told him, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.’
“I’m ready to go home, and so is everyone else here. Besides, how could I fight the very ones I’m supposed to love? How am I to exhibit the character of Christ by fighting for my own freedom? Jesus laid down His rights, His life, for His enemies. He’s called us to do the same. Think of how different history would have been had there not been Christian martyrs willing to be strapped to the stake. Persecution has always made the church stronger, Matthew. Never weaker.”
Scott said nothing, his mind grappling with such a bizarre concept. He looked down at Jennifer’s sleeping face, shadows shifting back and forth across it.
Ralston rubbed his chin. “Jesus was in Israel while it was under Roman occupation, most of the Jewish people waiting for a Messiah who was going to come and cast off that yoke. And it was within that sociopolitical and religious context that Jesus laid down the example His followers were to emulate. No talk of revolution or war, patriotism, or anything like that. He even cried out for God to forgive those who had crucified him. So I find no scriptural basis that would allow us to take up arms against those who might be coming to persecute us. The reason we are in this position, I believe, is because the church needs it. Desperately. When material dreams slip away, when leisure and luxury are gone, when personal freedoms are taken away, then everything becomes crystal clear to the believer. We can see things through the eyes of eternity again, realizing that this place isn’t our true home and that to die is actually gain. We remember that we’re told not to fear what man can do to our bodies, but to fear the One who has authority over the soul. We learn to rejoice in our sufferings, counting it as all joy. We recall what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we become fully aware that the most important thing in life is not liberty, or democracy, or our paychecks. Dying to self, not killing for self, is the foundation of true Christianity. And so this is the refiner’s fire that has come to our land to rebuke the church.”
The Solomon Key Page 36